The depoliticized politics of crowdfunding: A critical examination of the Darren Wilson crowdfunding campaign

Abstract

On 9 August 2014, Darren Wilson, a white police officer, shot and killed Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager, in Ferguson, Missouri. Soon after the shooting, two crowdfunding campaigns were organized through the GoFundMe platform, one for Darren Wilson and one for the family of Michael Brown. Using the work of Bauman, Dean, and Fuchs, I argue that these crowdfunding campaigns function as neoliberal mechanisms. Through the depoliticization and displacement of political energies, and the redirection of those energies towards the private sphere, these campaigns provide for affective political expression while simultaneously neutralizing its disruptive political potential.